The life and death of BBC broadcaster Jill Dando will be documented in an upcoming series, Netflix has announced. The TV icon, who was originally from Weston-super-Mare was shot and killed on her doorstep in Fulham on April 26, 1999.
In a multi-part series currently in production, the life of the former Crimewatch presenter will be chronicled with a mix of archive, new research and interviews. Netflix said it will focus on “Dando’s life, career, legacy and what would become one of the most notorious unsolved murders of the 20th century”.
Speaking to the BBC in 2019 her brother Nigel Dando described the moment he found out his sister was killed and said he believed her murder was a stranger who committed a random act of brutality. Nigel was working at the Bristol Post, as a reporter, when the news broke.
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During the candid interview he told the BBC a fellow journalist called him, saying his sister had been involved in an accident and asking whether he knew anything. As he was trying to get hold of Jill, who was aged 37 at the time of her death, it was announced on a news bulletin she had died.
The new Netflix documentary is directed by Marcus Plowright, known for Fred And Rose West: Reopened and executive produced by Emma Cooper, who worked on The Mystery Of Marilyn Monroe: The Unheard Tapes. Dando’s former colleague and Crimewatch presenter Nick Ross campaigned for the Jill Dando Institute (JDI) of Crime Science at University College London in her memory.
The JDI offers courses aimed at police, community safety partnership analysts, researchers and information officers as well as teaching undergraduate and post-graduate programmes and researching how to stop crime. When Ross collected a CBE at Windsor Castle in February 2022, he dedicated the honour to Dando and paid tribute to his “utterly committed” late co-host.
He said: “She was, I think like me and like other people involved in the show, changed by meeting more and more of the victims. But she was utterly committed to the show.” Ross said the programme’s success in its prime was partly due to his “wonderful co-presenter”.
Outside of her work on Crimewatch, Dando was also seen during the 1980s and 1990s on BBC shows including travel show Holiday and The Antiques Inspectors. She began as a reporter at her local paper The Weston Mercury in Weston-Super-Mare, before moving to the morning programme Breakfast Time, which later became BBC Breakfast.
Barry George was arrested on suspicion of murder in 2000, a year after Dando was killed. He was convicted and imprisoned for eight years, then acquitted and released after a retrial.
The Jill Dando documentary will be on Netflix in 2023.
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